Lucca Comics is the second biggest comics festival in the world after Tokyo’s Comiket.

As Israel intensifies its bombardment of 2.3 million Palestinians in the besieged and occupied Gaza Strip, artists are withdrawing from Europe’s top comics festival, Lucca Comics, over Israeli government sponsorship, the Palestinian news agency, WAFA, reported on Monday.

The news of the growing boycott was announced in a press release by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

Israeli Sponsorship

Bestselling cartoonist and author of the Netflix series ‘Tear Along the Dotted Line’, Zerocalcare, withdrew from the festival on Saturday.

In a statement Zerocalcare said,

“Unfortunately, the Israeli embassy sponsorship of Lucca Comics represents a problem for me. … I know that the logo on the poster is just a symbol, but that symbol for many people dear to me represents the fear of not seeing the sun rise tomorrow, the rubble under which their loved ones are buried, the threat of dying trapped in an open-air prison.”

Lucca Comics, which is set to run November 1-5, is the second biggest comics festival in the world after Tokyo’s Comiket.

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Amnesty Italy

Amnesty International Italy also withdrew from the festival, stating that the,

“Israeli embassy sponsorship of Lucca Comics forces us to renounce our presence. We understand that it is a consolidated practice to have the sponsorship of the embassies of countries of origin of the artists who create the image of the festival, but we cannot ignore the fact that the Israeli forces are incessantly besieging and bombing the Gaza Strip, with enormous losses of civilian lives.”

Amnesty International released a detailed report in February last year finding Israel guilty of the crime against humanity of apartheid.

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Solidarity

Italian singer-songwriter Giancane and the band Gli Ultimi, who were to perform together at Lucca Comics, have also withdrawn from the festival.

Gli Ultimi stated that their decision not to perform was taken “in solidarity with the Palestinian population, under heavy attack in recent days, as in recent decades.”

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‘Genocide’

Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, which has killed more than 8,000 Palestinians, including at least 3,324 children, has been described as a “textbook case of genocide” by Israeli genocide scholar Raz Segal.

The US-based Center for Constitutional Rights drew the same conclusion in a legal brief, noting that genocide is the “gravest of crimes under international law.”

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, called to boycott Lucca Comics and all events partnering with the Israeli government.

(WAFA, PC)